Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing and rightdoing,
there is a field. I'll meet you there.
When the soul lies down in that grass,
the world is too full to talk about.
Ideas, language, even the phrase each other
doesn't make any sense.--Rumi

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Echoes

Writing on the internet-- the kind of exploratory and spiritually themed writings that spill from me--feels like I am addressing my parole up, up, and away, out into a cavernous abyss, playfully listening for my echo. Sending my words out into a time and space that I don't direct or control, and allowing the contours of that canyon, that have all the power in the world, to shape just how and when my words return to me: how they will sound, and how they will be received within my being.

I have fallen in love with the precious moments that I began to hear my soul for the first time--when I was filled with wonder at how and when I came to know what I seemed to have always known, from the deeper reaches--something unnameable, unquantifiable, and unfathomable and yet, within my grasp. I have fallen in love with how every soul I've come to know along the way, holds this same wisdom, as if we all drink from the same fount.

I find myself unapologetic for being me these days--my footsteps surer, my heart safely left unlocked--a strength and clarity of knowing it is okay to say yes and no, and to mean both.

And so it is that I turn away less from my own echo, the worry that some straggler below has heard my impassioned utterings on the mount and is launching a tomato or two at my face, while heckling me, insisting I get off my stage, or my soap box.

I listen closely for my echo now, because what is said from the heart is worth hearing again and again. And it is often those who close their ears to hearing, who show up in the end as having heard. I can attest to this on levels I never could have imagined.

The world feels pretty whole to me, pretty redeemable, pretty pretty.

I have sent many words out into the unknown from this platform, and those words have returned to echo in me over and over--often the same themes--brushing me up against a truth that feels as though it is the most real thing about this human experience.

Something I encountered long ago now, in A Course in Miracles, points to this place best, and has echoed within me endlessly since I read it, when I could barely understand its meaning. Yet, it has been the mighty canyon walls shaping my voice and carrying it back to me, to receive anew each time, as my body becomes strong enough to hold it in my awareness for longer periods of time:

Only love is real, and nothing real can be threatened.

So many words, so many thoughts, so many stories have been told here. It is as if each one of them held a precious question that begged exploration, and just in putting the proposition to paper, the answers would rise up from some place unknown, and yet so known.

I love the mystery of it. I love how the internet brings us together to connect here in subtle ways that we all know aren't so subtle.

We've been birthing the Real within us. Behind the safety of screens, we've been letting our vulnerable hearts out to play, until we are stronger, until we can trust that it is safe to venture out and connect in the flesh--and then the gift we are given is monumental--the realization that: you are me, and I am you.

I have grown to love this feeling of the unknown more and more. I love the surprises. I love the speechless moments, the overflowing of tears. I am befriending wanting to bolt when it gets too much, whether good or bad-- and even the squirming when two souls collide and can't find up from down!

Fear is a signal for me to look up and not away. Pain is a signal that I have yet to let in all the light of my birthright. And death is a friend I allow to sit at my table now, and you know, when he took off that foreboding cloak of his, and lost the angel of death act, I found him to be someone I could sit close to in silence and love like a kind father. I let him hold me and tell me a story I finally had the ears to hear.

I love the solitude of showing up all alone on this mountain top ready to give my sermon, trusting that it is enough for the walls to caress my words and direct them back to me--enough that inanimate objects may be the only ones who hear me. Because, the sermon is for me-- to remind myself over and over, as I speak it aloud here, and send it out into the void, all that I have come to know, all that I have come to cherish, all that I no longer fear.

Welcome to my very own Utopia. A place where it is safe to be you, where it is preferred. Speak out loud and let me help you listen to your very own echo, which, I promise you, will amaze you.

Comments

Oh Brooke, this brought me to tears. My spirit recognized the things you were saying as true, filling me with love and hope that all things are just as they should be.

“Only love is real, and nothing real can be threatened.”

This has been my mantra for the last year, reassuring myself that my losses are not losses at all, but transitions to new places. My impulse is to grab onto things, white knuckled and frantic, but the Spirit says, “Let go, so that you may receive something new.”

I feel you beside me; Spirit sisters open to love and all that love has to offer in us and through us.

Hello, hello, hello, dear brave Brooke. Beautiful, resounding voice. I have been silent lately because I am not (quite) brave enough to shout out my current rage and despair. Thank you for reminding me that only love is real and what is real cannot be threatened.

"I love the solitude of showing up all alone on this mountain top ready to give my sermon" - you are a powerful teacher for me, and your sermon is one I am hungry for in my own knowledge of and relationship with my soul.

Only the love is real - may my life be a reflection of this oh so powerful lesson. Only the love is real. There is nothing to fear.

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